Have you ever heard about the Floppotron? Its creator, Paweł Zadrożniak calls it “ The Mechanical Orchestra”. It consists of old hardware. To be more precise, it was created using 64 floppy drives, 8 hard drives, 2 scanners and a lot of controllers. Please take a look at the video below, which is its latest cover of “House of the Rising Sun” and answer some questions below.
Questions:
1. What do you think about The Floppotron?
2. Do you know any other project that is similar to The Floppotron?
3. Can you think of any unusual sounds that you could turn into music?
Comments
I love it's version of Mortal Kombat song. Besides that one I once listen to most of its track, some sounds funny others originally and some just don't get into my liking.
2. Do you know any other project that is similar to The Floppotron?
There was or still is a guy that made music themes, like Star Wars or Walking Dead, from dogs barking.
3. Can you think of any unusual sounds that you could turn into music?
It can be anything, barking of the dog, hitting a metal with differant materials or some other animals. Nature is full of sounds that can be mixed into music we know.
2. I think one of the closest things that comes to my mind is one of the marble machines made by Wintergartan (you can watch the first one play here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IvUU8joBb1Q). In my opinion it's a bit of a different thing, it was built from scratch with musical application in mind from the beginning, not from repurposed hardware made to work like instruments (which in my opinion is even more impressive). If you're interested in a machine made with plywood, screws, cardboard, metal marbles, one dismembered guitar and surprisingly.. lego, making music for a few minutes I suggest giving the link above a click :)
3. Pretty much everything, I think it's what sample-based artists are all about. For those that you haven't that term before, it is what some of the electronic music producers are calling themselves. They seek sounds in the surrounding world or other music, heavily modify it by putting through various effects, add some other sounds and instruments and make tracks from that! If you haven't heard of that before, taking a small delve in that "genre" on youtoube/spotify/etc may be an interesting way to fill up an evening.
It looks great. I've seen these types of videos before and every time I see it, I want to do something like that. Maybe someday I will have this amount of electronics in my hands. I wonder how difficult it must be to create something like that. It seems to me that on the Internet some information can be found on how to create such a playing machine. I know some people use not only floppy drives, but also printers and HDDs, because they have motors that can make sounds
2. Do you know any other project that is similar to The Floppotron?
As I wrote, I have already seen a few videos of this type. Just let me google it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6B522GbH3D8
Here you go :) More pop music and also very famous.
With components other than the floppy drives themselves.
3. Can you think of any unusual sounds that you could turn into music?
I think anything can be adapted as sounds to music. The only thing that limits us is creativity. Once upon a time I saw a movie where someone was making a hiphop beat using only sounds from inside the car. Opening windows, knocking on the right plastics, turning on the turn signals ... Unfortunately, I can't find this video, but you must believe me, it turned out brilliant!
I have the channel subbed since a long time. Very nice and unique idea, reminds me of 8bit music.
2. Do you know any other project that is similar to The Floppotron?
Nothing really comes into my mind if you mean similar in terms of creating music with "mechanical devices" however I linked a few videos that are similar in terms of creating music with unconventional objects in point 3.
3. Can you think of any unusual sounds that you could turn into music?
I've seen plenty of videos that qualify for this question:
- I've seen some guy on YouTube creating hip-hop beats or songs from any sound he could get. In the end you couldn't even tell that the end product was made in such a way, it sounded like a normal, professional beat/song. I don't have the link sadly.
- Bunch of students having a good time during class and creating music with random sounds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1ZQbEKiZ8o
- Some Polish accent, triple concerto for faucet, water pipes and fiddle.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIgMeyW4TEM
- Another sink music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4KH3lhQ30I
That's what I call art, it can be created with anything!
Mortal Kombat's theme cover was actually made by another, smaller "floppotron". Nontheless, I agree that it's great. Probably since Mortal Kombat is a really old game, and sounds made by the floppotron fit perfectly with its times.
Wow, that Marble Machine is just amazing. I'm impressed by how complex it is, and how much creativity went into making it. It's quite different from the floppotron, but that's the thing, that you can turn anything into music.
I believe that making a project similar to the floppotron would be quite difficult. For me the most troubling part is getting ale the floppy drives, HDDs etc. And even if you have all the parts, I can't imagine how much time it takes to programm it all to make specific sound at the specific timeframe. And I think that that's exactly what makes the floppotron so interesting.
I really loved sink music videos, those are a great example of using everyday sounds to make music.
The idea behind it is't new but still I find it quite interesting. I have to admit that actually the level of complexity which is required in order to build such thing is amazing. As a fan of electronic music, the idea of using uncoventional electrical instruments in order to create sound and music is a great way to step outside the box.
2. Do you know any other project that is similar to The Floppotron?
Frankly, I find it hard to recall any other project showing resemblance to the Floppotron, that I heard of. However the creator behind the idea of using floppy disks in order to create music might be juxtaposed with some old-school electronic music makers such as Kraftwerk for instance. A very influential quartet whose patterns and ideas have been used in various genres, even those that differ a lot from eletronic music.
3. Can you think of any unusual sounds that you could turn into music?
To me, every sound can be sampled. The more unconvetional sound, the better. For example - door slamming or the sound of operating welding torch.